I'm trying to complete an application task for a CELTA course and it advises to use a "good grammer reference guide" I bought English Grammer in Use by Raymond Murphy but it seems to be a guide for someone wanting to learn english.... not quite what I was looking for!

Any advice on titles I should invest in?

The exercises I have to complete are:

What part of speech is an underlined word, analyse a word, identify tenses. I have managed to complete some using the internet but struggling with others.

Murphy, both the Red and the Blue, should serve you well. A reference book for someone trying to learning English is exactly what you are looking for. In addition, you could check out Swan's 'Practical English in Use'. Not for learners!

Give it to me. I've said determiner but want to check this answer as the internet could be incorrect. "me" is an object pronoun, object of the preposition "to."

Im going toFrance. Proposition. Not entirely sure why but the website seemed too. Yup, "to" is a preposition here, just as it is in the first example.

I want to go but I can't. Participle Huh - that's no participle,; that's the infinitive (i.e. to + the simple form)

I saw Mary last night.Transitive verb - because it meets the conditions of being an action verb and the follow is a direct action. Yup, it's a transitive verb, but what "follows" it is the direct object, "Mary."

I've loads more I'm struggling to find any answers too:

Smoking is a disgusting habit. "Smoking" is a gerund, used here as the subject of the sentence.

When does the train leave? Intransitive verb ? "does" is an auxiliary/helping verb for the present simple tense, used with negative sentences and with questions.

I'm trying to complete an application task for a CELTA course and it advises to use a "good grammer reference guide" I bought English Grammer in Use by Raymond Murphy but it seems to be a guide for someone wanting to learn english.... not quite what I was looking for!

Please pardon my sarcastic tone here, but I certainly hope that wasn't what you needed because the spelling is all wrong.

Grammar, not grammer. Please tell me CELTA didn't misspell it.

Sarcasm mode off.

Many people will cite Michael Swan's book Practical English Usage for what you want. That or books by Betty Azar. Look at the online catalogues for Cambridge University Press or Oxford University press for more titles.

Side note: I have heard the sad news that in recent (?) years far too many countries are not teaching basic grammar (such as I was taught back in the Cenozoic period). Very sad indeed.

To the OP, the Murphy books won't have a word like 'me' in the index at the back, but just a couple of hours browsing through the body of the book should reveal lots of answers to your questions. If not, then a quick internet search will:

Swan is a recurring recommendation in these forums, and in many respects a fine "quick" reference, but it is definitely not (and cannot ever really take the place of) an actual dedicated course in grammar, and its A-Z organization mainly by lexical word makes it hard to read through in any "progressively building" sense (i.e. it can be a bit like trying to read through a dictionary - some cross-referring between entries will be needed at times). It does (in the 2nd edition at least - not sure about the newer 3rd) have a 'Language terminology' glossary at the front, and a good index at the rear, but neither contain entries such as 'parts of speech' or 'word class', or 'phrases' or 'groups', so one would have no option but to work through the glossary entry by entry and try to compile one's own list, and it would likely be pretty difficult to build up a quick understanding of how words form phrases, and of how phrases are parsed (=form constituents). Mind you, one would probably be quite hard pressed to find 'to go'*, or even 'smoking' (gerund [a term only in Swan's index: "see -ing forms"], versus present participle [see various entries for participles], or the nicely fudgy-indeterminate '-ing form') in most books' treatments of the parts of speech, so those items in the task you've been set are arguably a bit unfair/too ambitious in a way.

For these reasons and more, I usually recommend Eastwood's Oxford Guide to English Grammar in preference to Swan (Swan himself recommends Eastwood for those looking for more than a quick-reference book: "[My book] is a reference book, not a systematic course in English grammar. ..... [My book] gives explanations of individual points of usage, but does not show how the separate points 'fit together'. For a systematically organised account of the whole of English grammar, students should consult a book such as....[among others - FH] Eastwood"). In the event that Eastwood still is too much reference and not enough "progressive course", perhaps try Leech et al's English Grammar for Today (Second edition). (I think this is a better, i.e. better-organized and written, actual course than the book by Parrott that Coledavis mentions, though the Parrott may be somewhat useful for getting a few ideas about problems [common student errors etc] and applications in teaching, assuming none would occur to the reader of Leech et al). See also e.g. http://forums.eslcafe.com/job/viewtopic.php?p=1053149#1053149 .

Murphy's and similar books are useful for getting an idea of how to contextualize and practise basic areas (e.g. tenses, articles and other determiners, countable versus uncountable nouns or uses of nouns), but they will be less helpful for more detailed or trickier~"theoretical" questions (that a teacher rather than a student might be expected to know or ponder). I would caution against Azar as she seems to fall back on using invented (i.e. rather inauthentic-sounding, perhaps even useless) sentences a bit too much.

*The 'to-infinitive', that is, an infinitival, non-finite phrase (or indeed non-finite clause, in more modern, less traditional grammar), consisting of the infinitival particle** 'to' plus the infinitive/base/dictionary-main-entry citation form of the verb, in this instance 'go'.

**"infinitival particle: the to used before an infinitive.
The to of the to-infinitive is not a preposition, as is shown by the fact that prepositions, including to, cannot be followed by an infinitive but require the -ing form of the verb (e.g. They resorted to violence or to attacking him, not *they resorted to attack him). [In other words, the word that follows to when it is infinitival rather than prepositional is always clearly a verb, e.g. They now wanted to attack and strangle Chalker & Weiner - FH]. Nor does this to share the characteristics of any other word class. It therefore has a label of its own." (From Chalker & Weiner's Oxford Dictionary of English Grammar's entry for 'nosebleeds, though hopefully quite helpful ones ultimately').

Last edited by fluffyhamster on Sat Jun 01, 2013 3:49 pm; edited 8 times in total

I refrained from using the term "particle" mainly because it is such a general "catch-all" term that I'd say it's essentially meaningless.

Particle Definition:

A word that does not change its form through inflection and does not easily fit into the established system of parts of speech. Particles are closely linked to verbs to form multi-word verbs (for example, go away).

Other particles include to used with an infinitive and not (a negative particle).